The future and culture of AI companionship

Building on the interactive exhibition curated by EAST2046 at London Data Week, this public panel discussion—hosted by the LSE Data Science Institute and King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence—focuses primarily on the evolving future of AI companionship. While briefly touching upon its origins, the session prioritises the forward-looking trajectory of digital connection and artificial intimacy.
Central to this exploration is how diverse cultural frameworks fundamentally shape technological development. Panellists will examine how the interplay between Eastern and Western philosophies creates distinct approaches to AI companionship, influencing societal acceptance and ethical boundaries. This focus highlights how cultural identity remains an important driver in defining the future of human-AI relationships.

Panellist and moderator information
Dr Lois Liao (Moderator)
Dr. Lois Liao is a writer and sociologist who explores how individuals maintain agency and connection within complex economic, technological, and political systems. Leveraging her background in mathematics (BA Cambridge), housing studies (PhD UCL and Postdoc LSE), and psychoanalysis (MA Birkbeck), she investigates how technology, markets, and ideology reshape care and selfhood. The same thread runs through EAST2046 CIC, which she co-founded to connect creatives, academics and technologists to think about to shape an inclusive and humanist future within the current technological development. Working between Chinese and British contexts, she asks how cultural frameworks shape artificial intimacy and technological developments.
Dr Ruby Wang (Panellist)
Dr Ruby Wang is a practising doctor, strategy consultant and writer. She is founding director of LINTRIS Health, a consultancy bridging East and West on global health, life sciences and policy for companies, investors and public institutions, and is a Digital Health Council member at the Royal Society of Medicine and Fellow on Global Health at the Asia Society thinktank. She was Head of Health for the UK Foreign Office at the British Embassy in China during COVID-19, and Health Adviser in for the United Nations in China and at AliHealth, Alibaba. She writes at China Health Pulse, a newsletter and podcast analysing the global impact of China’s health. Her book, “China Cure: the rise of a biotech, AI Medicine and Global Health Superpower” will be published in October 2026. Ruby obtained her MD/MBBS and MA in Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Cambridge and University College London, with an MMSc in Global Affairs as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University.
Ross O’Brien (Panellist)
Ross is Co-Founder of the XR Health Alliance, where he works with industry, academia, healthcare providers and policymakers to advance the adoption of immersive technologies in health. He co-authored The Growing Value of XR in Healthcare in the UK, a national report developed with the NHS, UKRI and Health Education England to help shape a strategic direction for immersive healthcare in the UK. Through XRHA, he has supported a wide network of XR health companies, including through the Mindset XR programme. Ross was previously Managing Director for Europe at Wysa, one of the world’s leading AI mental health platforms, used by millions of people across more than 90 countries. He led Wysa’s UK market entry and growth, helping establish the company as a recognised leader in digital mental health support. Before moving into industry, Ross spent over a decade in the NHS, most recently as Director of Innovation and Technology at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. He was also Lead for the Grenfell Health and Wellbeing Service, the NHS mental health service established following the Grenfell Tower fire to support the affected community.
Dr Eoin Fullam (Panellist)
Eoin is a psychosocial researcher and precarious lecturer, currently teaching in the dept. Social Sciences in Birkbeck, University of London. Eoin completed a PhD in 2024 and postdoctoral research in Birkbeck. Eoin’s research is interdisciplinary, drawing on critical theory, science and technology studies and psychoanalytic theory to analyse contemporary technical society and human subjectivity. Eoin’s primary research concern is to investigate the ways in which our human condition is constructed, produced, or influenced by technological artifacts. Eoin has pursued this research concern via a sustained project which analyses various automated forms of mental health interventions, from therapy chatbots to ‘manualised’ forms of mental health diagnosis and treatment. Eoin’s work is often done in collaboration with the Birkbeck Centre for Psychosocial Studies Research and Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health, as well as the Capitalism and Mental Health Research Unit and the Technical Mental Health Research Group. Eoin’s monograph ‘Chatbot Therapy' was published in 2025 on Routledge.